Hi, I my boss land me his Oculus Rift so I could get ready to do a conference about it at University. When I started to download the demos, I wished someone would had made a Bowling game, but that wasn't the case, so I did one!

I had posted a video on YouTube last week and now a first playable prototype you can enjoy!

The game is designed to work with the Wii Remote (or any third party compatible), but you can play it with a keyboard as well and a controller (but I haven't exhaustingly tested that option).

Of course you need an Oculus Rift to play the game properly.

Go to the official website for the most recent download link: http://www.retroristic.com/information:To play this demo you need a Windows PC or an Intel mac, with the oculus rift connected to the computer.

If you want to use the Wii remote to play (as I recommend!) You need to pair it on your computer at first and then you're gonna be able to use it in the game. Press 1+2 on the controller while you're in the game to connect it. If the controller doesn't respond, quit the game and start over, this might happen from time to time, but once the controller is connected, you can reset the game by pressing the (+) button, and the controller will stay connected.

Right now no menus has been completed, so you need to use ALT+F4 to exit on Windows or CMD+Q on OSX.

The game is fully functional using a Keyboard, PS3 Controller on OSX should work too and the Xbox 360 controller on Windows, but I will fully support theses options in future releases.

*Linux user won't be able to use the Wii Remote as UniWii is only available for OSX and Windows. If you really want a complete Linux version, you just have to rewrite the UniWii dll for Linux and make it available so I could integrate it otherwise consider the Linux version an extra. Let me know about your experience, since I don't have (or really want) Linux myself.

Good one, Nintendo has sold over 100 million Wii with an average of 2.5 Wii remotes per console sold, that's 250 million Wii remotes.You can get a Wii remote for less than 20$ and it's far enough for the needs of the game

Maybe if you donate an Razer Hydra I could incorporte that in, but other than that, cheap and widely availability dictates my choice.

It's one thing to support cheaper device. Supporting cheap devices only is not a good move. Especially that Hydra is clearly superior in everything except being wired, which is sort of an advantage too - never run out of battery mid-game.

You don't particularry need a Hydra to employ it's support. You just need to know that Hydra provides 1:1 motion input in absolute measurement against the base with no drift, and with a bit of judder which needs a bit of smoothing, 30-50 ms smoothing should do just excellent but having a knob for that is a good idea.

raidho36 wrote:Look I don't want a lousy wiimote now that I own Hydra.

It's one thing to support cheaper device. Supporting cheap devices only is not a good move. Especially that Hydra is clearly superior in everything except being wired, which is sort of an advantage too - never run out of battery mid-game.

You don't particularly need a Hydra to employ it's support. You just need to know that Hydra provides 1:1 motion input in absolute measurement against the base with no drift, and with a bit of judder which needs a bit of smoothing, 30-50 ms smoothing should do just excellent but having a knob for that is a good idea.

You don't need 1:1 motion detection to begin with. I'm not against the idea, but I won't drop the Wii remote support since it's already efficient. Professionally I'm a game designer and control design is my specialities, so I would be thrilled to incorporate something more immersive in my game, but I'm also the kind of guy who won't throw support without prior testing the device. It's not a matter of feasibility, it's a matter of design! If the Razor Hydra is that immersive I would probably resign the entire experience to fully support a control scheme.

The game also support PS3 controller, Xbox 360 controller, and keyboard so far, I try to make it smoother and more efficient to play it every way you may want, but I can only support what I own.

Again, if you want that feature that bad, you can contact me personally and donate me a Razor Hydra and I will put that in for sure .

note: I previously had designed a game for PSN that is using the PS Move; also 1:1 and it was overkill for most of my needs.

I haven't tried it yet, but I guess if it uses axial input then it'll work like crap on my system with 4 distinct type of controllers hooked up simultaneously, one of which has 3 out of 4 axis in "leftmost" position by default because it's a racing wheel & pedals set.

You don't need to imlement 1:1 motion control with Hydra, you can just map it to the same gesture controls as wiimote. But having 1:1 VR hands is clearly superior in every way to just motion controls. You should support both 1:1 and non-VR inputs, but that depends - HL2VR doesn't support any non-VR inputs whatsoever, and for good reason.

raidho36 wrote:I haven't tried it yet, but I guess if it uses axial input then it'll work like crap on my system with 4 distinct type of controllers hooked up simultaneously, one of which has 3 out of 4 axis in "leftmost" position by default because it's a racing wheel & pedals set.

You don't need to imlement 1:1 motion control with Hydra, you can just map it to the same gesture controls as wiimote. But having 1:1 VR hands is clearly superior in every way to just motion controls. You should support both 1:1 and non-VR inputs, but that depends - HL2VR doesn't support any non-VR inputs whatsoever, and for good reason.

I like to switch transparently between controller (when possible) if your using one, than the UI will change according to the controller you're using. Also for mapping, calibrating and configuration are planned to be implemented. Don't forget so far this project is only two weeks old. And even if I can just map the axis like a wii remote the input that I use is raw data from the controller itself so it's not exactly the same values or range of value between the Razor Hydra and the Wii remote. The library I use doesn't even support gyroscope for the roll, pitch, yaw values, so I had to implement it using Accelerometers (don't need to say it's not accurate enough, again it's not a big deal since I use raw force and pivot angle after you release the ball to make the shoot and the spin.) If I had gyroscope as well, I could have done a much better implementation of the swing as well, but it wasn't necessary to make the game really playful!

On the other hand, you should really undust a old yellowish wii remote from your closet and give it a try as it is right now.

Wiimote doesn't have a gyroscope, it only has accelerometers and IR cam to work with "sensor bar" which is actually an IR LED bar.

You would have to write it's own input processing function for every distinct input device, you can't expect buttons to work like axis, or accelerometer to work like absolute positon&rotation tracker for that matter.

It's fine to give user trapsnarent input methods. Doesn't mean it'll be smooth and transparent for you to implement.

I could only play it with keyboard, since the default xbox controller mapping in unity doesn't work in Linux. However, I liked it a lot, and I think it has great potential. I think maybe it lacked a bit of that bowling-alley feel and action.. I think an option to follow the ball down the lane for instance would be neat - or maybe see the ball roll from a pins point of view. It also needs cheesy bowling-ally music! I think the HUD is great, and the depth is very good, too.

I don't understand the WiiMote hate at all. I haven't tried it with VRfit Bowling, but bowling on the Wii was one of the things that I thought worked really well - and surely for bowling wireless controllers are preferable over wired?It's too bad it doesn't work with Linux, but I think you made a good call using it.

(A small detail: x86 builds doesn't play well with 64 bit installations out of the box, which is why I asked for x86 + x86_64 (universal) ).

I could only play it with keyboard, since the default xbox controller mapping in unity doesn't work in Linux. However, I liked it a lot, and I think it has great potential. I think maybe it lacked a bit of that bowling-alley feel and action.. I think an option to follow the ball down the lane for instance would be neat - or maybe see the ball roll from a pins point of view. It also needs cheesy bowling-ally music! I think the HUD is great, and the depth is very good, too.

I don't understand the WiiMote hate at all. I haven't tried it with VRfit Bowling, but bowling on the Wii was one of the things that I thought worked really well - and surely for bowling wireless controllers are preferable over wired?It's too bad it doesn't work with Linux, but I think you made a good call using it.

(A small detail: x86 builds doesn't play well with 64 bit installations out of the box, which is why I asked for x86 + x86_64 (universal) ).

I'll check that soon. The camera following the ball is planned, but not from the players eyes (unless you want to throw-up) but the TV display above the alley can be used for it. For the 64 bit installations, I'm gonna rebuild it soon.

raidho36 wrote:Wiimote doesn't have a gyroscope, it only has accelerometers and IR cam to work with "sensor bar" which is actually an IR LED bar.

You would have to write it's own input processing function for every distinct input device, you can't expect buttons to work like axis, or accelerometer to work like absolute positon&rotation tracker for that matter.

It's fine to give user trapsnarent input methods. Doesn't mean it'll be smooth and transparent for you to implement.

I know all that, and the (Wii motion +) has a gyroscope, but isn't supported by the Api I use, everything else is implemented the best way possible.

This is without doubt the most immersive rift experience for me yet. Hugely impressed with the wii remote support - gave me a reason to dig mine out and dust it off; was kind of shocked/surprised it worked first time as soon as I switched it on. Would love to see this demo developed further. Once again, congrats and will happily big this project up to anyone who cares to show an interest R

No Rift myself, but I do have a Wiimote. I stayed seated and ended up bowling by flicking the Wiimote "Fishing Style". Was kind of funny.

I guess I'm not surprised, but I didn't even know there were any Unity plugins/scripts for Wiimote support! Maybe I can get support in my next demo. I don't own a hydra, and some motion controls might be nice! =)

I'm wondering how you attached the wii mote to the bowling ball. We have a system where we can pick up certain items on a table and when pressing the wii mote move them around - however for some strange reason it only works on our desktop system not on our laptop. Yours works on both of our systems so I'm wondering if we call the wiimote connection a different way if it will work on our laptop.

raidho36 wrote:Look I don't want a lousy wiimote now that I own Hydra.

It's one thing to support cheaper device. Supporting cheap devices only is not a good move. Especially that Hydra is clearly superior in everything except being wired, which is sort of an advantage too - never run out of battery mid-game.

You don't particularry need a Hydra to employ it's support. You just need to know that Hydra provides 1:1 motion input in absolute measurement against the base with no drift, and with a bit of judder which needs a bit of smoothing, 30-50 ms smoothing should do just excellent but having a knob for that is a good idea.

You have some serious attitude problems there, damn.

The Wiimote (and even more the Wiimote Plus, which is on par with Move in its near 1:1 tracking) is more than capable of a simple bowling game. As demonstrated by countless bowling games on Wii.